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Does eSports content belong in ~games or ~sports?
This post is meant to provoke a discussion and possibly find a resolution or at least set an expectation as far as where to post esports content.
I don't really have an opinion either way but would like to discuss the topic, because it seems like not setting an expectation might lead to similar content being posted to one or the other of the two communities when all the content would be prefered in one community to make finding things easier.
On top of this perfect answer, tagging it inside ~games with esports seems like a good idea - if enough esports tags appear, we could eventually start ~games.esports.
Basically this.
Additionally, if there was a ~baseball I’d argue baseball related stuff should go there instead of sports.
If that were the case what type of content would you expect to be posted in ~sports?
I assume that a so-called ~baseball group would actually be placed as ~sports.baseball. I've seen talk that sub-groups (such as ~sports.baseball) might be accessed via a simple alias (such as ~baseball), but the underlying hierarchy would still place those sub-groups under appropriate parent groups - which means ~sports would still contain posts about baseball in ~sports.baseball.
Things that don’t have enough of an audience to merit a separate tilde(?).
For example, right now I don’t think there’s enough of a baseball following (or really any physical sport for that matter) to give it a tilde.
For me the coolest thing about this site is the idea of subgroups, that one day there will be a ~sports.baseball where baseball-related things will be posted.
There will probably be an e-sports subgroup as well, either ~sports.esports or ~games.esports.
Weird esoteric sports. Tildes could have their own version of /r/theocho, but I guess that would get delegated to it's own tilde too.
As a gamer and an athlete, in my opinion, ESports belongs solely in ~games.
While ESports share many similarities with common team sports, they are video games first. The people that ESports appeals to are going to be gamers.
Regardless of the "are esports sports" conversation, I think it makes sense to be posting based on what fits with how users group themselves and where interests are likely to intersect (along with other practical considerations).
In my mind, esports are sports, but the interest group overlaps much much more with discussions of other video games than it does with people interested in cricket, and I don't think it would be a worthwhile issue to force.
While you're right, another grey area would be chess. There's been a long and wearisome debate over whether it's a sport, and you will find people on both sides of the aisle if you try to force it into being either a 'game' or a 'sport' for the purposes of a website's taxonomy.
No one says chess is a sport
Is that a weak attempt to start an argument?
No it's just a comment. No one says chess is a sport. Something in the gray area would be golf or bowling.
........ K den...
For me, ~games is the appropriate place.
I kind of think of them like snooker, darts, chess, bridge etc. They're competitive, but they're not sports like cricket or rugby.
Esports players are playing computer games, and computer games are discussed in ~games. It seems obvious to me: esports topics go in ~games.
Just to play Devil's Advocate, the same can be said for the other.
Well said, I'm on the fence about it which is why I posted but this comment really says it best and I find it hard to counter so I'll just lay out my thought process.
I was thinking ~sports might be best as the sporting world as a whole is starting to accept eSports more as a traditional 'sport' than it has been in the past, even ESPN has started to regularly broadcast Overwatch and is making their eSports coverage stronger than I've ever seen it and the reception has been better than I expected.
As far as the second statement you made, I don't think it is entirely true. A video game doesn't need to be made into a sport via external rules, while it is true that some eSports have additional rules and restrictions in their eSport variant, others like OW, CSGO, LoL are made to be competitive and a 'sport' without additional rules as far as I'm aware.
According to the Oxford Dictionary, sport is "an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment". [emphasis mine]
Sitting on your arse in front of a computer doesn't count as physical exertion. Computer gaming is not a sport.
Yep! I'm a grumpy old man in training, and there ain't no way I'm gonna accept computer games as a sport.
And diving, which is basically falling into water with a bit of panache, is an Olympic sport.
I wonder if the IOC will ever allow chess into the games.
Actually, Chess was an exhibition sport at the 2000 games, and along with eSports and a few other things is under consideration for inclusion from 2024 onwards.
I did not know. And, now that I do know...
I disagree with their opinion.
I disagree with their decision as well, but this makes a somewhat compelling argument
https://www.chess.com/article/view/is-chess-a-sport
Even that article supposedly defending the classification of chess as a sport starts out with "No, chess is not a sport" - on the same basis that I don't classify chess as a sport, being a lack of physical activity. The best it can say is that "chess is LIKE a sport in many ways!" :P
Anyway, a lot of the qualities listed there are not exclusive to sports, like being competitive, requiring skill, and arousing national fervour - all of which apply to games and war, among other things. The closest they come is that chess is physically demanding, but that's not the same as requiring physically activity.
I did say a "somewhat compelling", not "a convincing", argument.
Intuitively, I would expect to find esports content in ~games.esports, or arguably within each specific games own sub group, eg. ~games.dota2.esports. This based on what I (and I presume most people) have grown to expect based on other sites.
In general, I would consider esports to be roughly as much a "sport" as, say, motorsports. There's the typical athletic sports (football, soccer, tennis, etc) in which peak physical performance and teamwork is the goal, and motorsports in which (I presume) physical strength and endurance still has a role, but engineering, tactics, and teamwork are arguably just as important, and esports which are almost purely tactics/strategy/teamwork.
"Sports" in general most often seems to refer specifically to the athletic-sports, and that's still what I would expect to find within ~sports. Motorsports I might expect in either ~motorsports/~racing or possibly ~sports.motorsports, while esports I would expect to be in ~gaming.esports or possibly ~esports if it becomes big enough.
Somewhat related; do we have any guidelines regarding posting the same content in multiple groups? If I find an interesting article about esports, should I post it in both ~sports and ~games?